


Sunless

by dragoninthesunlesssky



Category: Sunless, Vyn - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Freeform, Horror, Multi, Mystery, OC, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Original Fiction, POV Original Character, Psychological Horror, Surreal, myoc - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-06-27 09:38:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15682809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoninthesunlesssky/pseuds/dragoninthesunlesssky
Summary: Vyn is a small island nation in the middle of the sea where the sky is orange-red, the ground is both hot and cold, and the people are apathetic to the mysteries around them. Kristine happens to also be one of these apathetic people, despite working as a freelance task fulfiller that has required her to handle anything from taming lions to teaching poetry to 7 year olds. Exactly a month ago a new neighbour that just moved in vanished which deeply disturbed Kristine. However, once she finds her, she uncovers a whole other side of Vyn that is far more unsettling than Vyn itself.





	1. Happy New Year

It was deathly quiet. 

The Chinese restaurant was ornamented with ostentatious faux-gold waving cats, goldifsh, and wanton-shaped heaps made of that matt plastic gold, and bright red lanterns, scrolls of calligraphy and printed well wishes like "福" tipped upside down as part of the tradition. Kristine sat alone at a table, fitted with a large cream table cloth and a glass spinning tabletop. 

She blew at the opaque, white-with-black-spots plastic cup, trying not to scald her tongue. 

The chairs were half wooden half plastic - a mix and match that looked as though they had been pulled from the nearest thrift store. 

She waited.

 

"Sorry, I got caught up in a meeting."

A teenage-looking boy strutted towards the table, rubbing his short and soft almond coloured hair, feeling its curly locks. He was wearing a baby blue striped office shirt, tucked into his tan pants. He had his sleeves rolled up - probably an attempt to beat the ridiculously hot weather. 

His eyes were a beautiful light cerulean, his pinkish lips lifting at both ends to project a lighthearted and sweet smile. 

"And how are you today." He asked with a smile, casually picking at a small dish of nut mix. 

 

"Good." Kristine grunted. He was in a particularly chirpy mood which kind of conflicted with her more reasonably downcast face. 

"So, the helper becomes the helpee." He chuckled, delicately picking up a piece of deep fried chicken, coated in a sweet-and-sour orangish-red syrup with a suspicious fluorescent glow.

"Don't mock me." She muttered, bitterly.  

"Oh... Oh no I didn't mean to strike a nerve." Anon said with a slight sigh. "You know how I like to tease you."

"Okay, well maybe quit the teasing this time?" Kristine shot back with a slight growl. 

"Alrighty. Let's get down to business then, Kris?" He pulled out his thin as paper computer and began typing. He looked up from his screen. "Well, you know the drill." 

 

She drew in a deep breath. 

 

"I am Kristine Jackson, and I'm requesting your help to find an friend." 


	2. Chapter 2

"My my Kris. I didn't peg you to be so... caring." Anon giggled like a gossipy schoolgirl. He dipped his hands in a translucent vandyke brown bowl of lemon water, wiping them on the stone cold white towels rolled into neat rods next to each cutlery set.

Kristine merely pursed her lips, sucking in the cold, dusty air from the closing restaurant.

“Okay, well. Give me the deets.”

 

Kristine bit her lip. _This is no time to be getting cold feet._

“I last saw Kalfania Yanzir three days ago at 7 am, after a walk. I-”

“Kalf? That lovely woman? What scandalous chain of events led her to become friends with a rapscallion like you?” Anon widened his eyes, mystified. “No wait, I know now," he said with little more than a huff, "love potion."  

Kristine leaned back, closing her eyes in frustration. “I did _not_  cast a spell on her, we were _neighbours_ , we happened to go for morning walks with each other, and _what do you mean by rapscallion?”_

Anon skimmed over the remark and began typing away, the keyboard making a noise as fast and persistent as a woodpecker’s beak comically hammers into a tree trunk, yet as loud as the asshat who chews and slurps too loud in a theatre.

“Okie…” Anon looked up from his screen, fingers still firing away, “now, any mentions of going on holiday? Or any indication that she may have gone away? Say her car’s missing… etcetera?”

Kristine furrowed her eyebrows.

“Not an idiot, her car’s still in the driveway, never mentioned a holiday, rang the doorbell like 5 times at every hour of the day, no response, called her, goes to voicemail, I haven’t seen anybody aside from her enter or exit her house after she moved in, and before you say anything, yes I kinda maybe sorta broke into her house and found her phone on the dining table, out of battery. Her wallet was in her coat pocket hanging on the coat stand - I know it’s hers - and-”

“Woah woah woah, slow down there bud…” Anon raised his left hand, trying to pace Kristine, miraculously typing with only one hand at the same speed as before, “I may be able to listen and type at the same time but I am, however unfortunate, part human.”

 

Kristine dipped her head down. “Sorry, just… been worried.”

“I see that.” Anon rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. “But… ooh typo, that’s a first in a while,” he temporarily looked down at the screen, a frown forming and disappearing nearly instantaneously, “you know… you went from ‘haven’t seen her in a few days’ to ‘broke into her house like a stalker and tried to find her valuables’ in a very short span of time."

Kristine tapped her fingers in a jarring pattern, her raised eyebrow indicating that she wasn't entirely certain as to why sneaking into a friend's house was questionable. Anon, of all people, would know how many times she's broken into somebody else's house for the sake of completing a job. 

Anon attempted to explain.

"Now, not gonna deny, a phone left on the table like that? A bit odd. Wallet still there? Even more odd. We both know this plenty well.” Anon got back to tick-tacking away. “But… I have to say, you might be too... rattled over this. I’ve done a few benders myself, only brought myself and the clothes on my back, sometimes less, to some star-spangled party in your everyday mansion or abandoned wood shack.”

  
Kristine looked up. “Not comforting.”

"Plus, what do you know about her, didn't she only move in-"

" _ **Don't sta** **rt** **with me.**_ " 

“All I’m saying is maybe… give it another day. Rest on it. Don’t do too many B-and-Es. And, take it as my personal gift to allow you to work on your own case.”

“How very kind of you.”   
Anon tutted. “Honey, I am being more than kind by providing you a full profile of all I know of Kalf, and an entire bank of information I could find of her online. You know how valuable my time is? A minute could cost the average person 25 dollars.”

“I know. I work for you.”

“Mmhm. So appreciate it.”

Anon ruffled Kristine’s hair. He seemed to enjoy patting the heads of his employees. Was it loving? Not quite. Degrading? Not unreasonable to think so.

 

“Okay. Okay.” Kristine lifted up Anon’s palm, resting it on the table. “Thank you, Anon.”

He winked.

“I expect you to pay me in conversations over coffee about this surprising budding relationship in your life.”

Kristine winced at the thought.

“I sure will… attempt.”

Smiling, Anon got up from his seat, slipped a ten dollar bill under his plate, and sashayed out of the glass doors.

 

Illuminated by the green and pink neon lights outside, Kristine caught a glimpse of Anon happily greeting a couple, distressed, eyes struck with fear - a sustained fear, not from seeing Anon (but anybody would testify that Anon had a certain way about him - particularly the dance he made of being affable and disturbing - that didn't quite sit right with anybody). 

_Another client._

 

“Can I get the bill?”

 

The waitress waltzed up to her, almond eyes glaring at the barely eaten plate of sweet and sour chicken that was now a banquet for bloated black-and-red spotted flies. She tsked, pointing at the food. “Gonna have to charge you for that.” Her voice was raspy, gruff like a chainsmoker. Behind her dried, crackling lips, her teeth peeked out, a mismatch of a black that absorbed all forms of light and trapped them in the charcoal abyss, and a translucent yellow, the same yellow of watery scrambled eggs found in dingy gas station diners scraped off an unsatisfied trucker's plate, missing the garbage bag with its handles tied around a fire extinguisher, and splashing onto the oily beige tiles.

Kristine gulped, uncomfortably looking away. “Yeah. Sure.”

The woman scooped the plate with one hand, a trail of ravenous flies following close behind, slamming her glossy red heels onto the large white tiles that reflected the fluorescent white rows of lights back at the ceiling. 

A mirror for the bulbs to look into. 

_Were rods, bulbs?_

 

Kristine decided it’d be better to just leave a 20 dollar note behind for her 7 buck meal and make a break for it.

  
  
  


She trotted outside, hands mildly sweaty in the warm, humid, night. The worst kind of nights.  

Anon was long gone, probably whisking his new ‘victims’ to the nearest 24/7 McDonald’s.

Now, not even a shadow moved. Perhaps stray cats yawning, revealing their ivory teeth and spiney claws - that was all the movement she really saw. That and moths (double the surface area of her face) soaring through the night sky, dipping dangerously close to eye-level before zipping up again, in circles around the dim amber glow of the street lights.

She zipped up her purple leather jacket.

 

  
Just as she was retreating into the harrowing memory of a moth diving into the back of her linty grey shirt, a certain pressure on her shoulder jolted her back into the present.

 

 

A hand.  
_Warm_ . She thought. _Very warm_ .   
It wasn’t the type of heat that was comforting. It was a heat more so resembling a vaporise-your-skin warm.

A kind of warmth that you don't seem to think is quite that bad until it strikes your nerves and you realise something very very bad has just happened, the kind of bad that requires medical attention, painkillers, and burn cream.   
  
“Yes?” Kristine stumbled about, turning out of shock rather than anger. Concern even. 

 

_The waitress that served her at the restaurant._

 

Her eyes sagged, bulged even. Like cysts on her face, becoming too large to fit into the allocated space on her skull for such growths. They begun to droop over the edges of her eyelids, eyelashes piercing into the cloudy water balloons that were her eyes.

A cigarette dangled out from her slightly parted lips.

The bud dropped out, extinguishing as it fell to the floor. Ashes formed a mini mushroom cloud around the cigarette, like a bomb, and disappeared into the air.

 

 

There really wasn't more that Kristine could do but watch.   
  
“ _ **S….sa...save…h-**_ ” 

She hacked. 

It was a visceral screech, as though she were trying to conjure up something deep in her throat, something close to an organ. Pain and anger festered in her eyes which were now as yellow as her teeth and just as translucent too, having the visual texture of a bowl of hardened jello blended into chunks and bits.

Kristine squinted. 

Yellow like some brands of super glue. Cloudy like lard.

 

It began with clawing. Scratching. Incessant clawing and scratching. 

Her skin had begun to bubble and boil with heat and redness. Purple squarish bumps began pushing up to the front of her skin, trying to break free from the paper thin skin that kept them in. 

Then it became a mixture of exaggerated hand motions and staggers. 

Her arms extended outwards like an eagle's wings, before reeling back into a reserved position, throwing, nae, lunging her forward, as she gurgled and spat. Bits of phlegm spewed all over, the yellowish chunks splattering onto the pavement below. 

At some stage, her legs gave, and the knobs on her knees scraped against the sharpened gravel, digging into her skin and lodging themselves in all sorts of awkward and mangled positions. 

She would lean back as her spine bent backwards, before she'd grip onto bits of road and cast her body further towards a terrified Kristine, frozen in place as she bears witness to something she could only describe as a complicated case of the flu. 

Her face twisted, swelling and twisting, now as bloated as the flies before. In an attempt to combat the sudden change in its own volume, her face tried to fold back into her neck, preparing to eject the spare fluids that occupied her body. She stretched her mouth open, as wide as she could, her swollen and cracked lips now tearing into thin slices.

  
  
With a final, tortured, grizzly bark, a thing flew out.

  
  
_A thing._

  
  
That’s the only way Kristine could describe such a… truly horrible sight. A ball? No, a fist. It was a fist of coagulated blood held together by bits of white… bones? It was evident it racked up flesh. _The sides of her gullet_ , Kristine supposed. But inside, there was something... squirming. Contorting its tubular string of goo into biomorphic shapes that extended and retracted like the waitress' body. 

She had hoped it would stop.

 

But after a good minute, it was evident it would not stop.   
  
The being was elongated. A black, tail-like creature, with no eyes, no mouth - nothing. It was just moving, like a snake, but not as graceful. It pulsated, and moved weirdly, uncertain of how its own body worked, like a newborn baby.   
The flagellum-villi combo was covered in a yellow pus. Thick and runny like mucus that formed loose strands of substance that stringed like saliva. 

A mucus that formed some form of veil over its tar body. 

Perhaps it was a… confused earthworm.  
  
The woman looked mortified. She screamed, but her voice was broken. Like a record player with a snapped needle, or a secondhand car with a handful of miles on it being sold on craigslist for a suspiciously low amount. Either way, her voice was a mechanical failure and Kristine could do _nothing_ but stare.   
  
Her scream gradually grew into a triangle in a concert band.   
Drowned out by the sounds of cats clawing at tipped trash cans, trees rustling as their crowns brushed past each other, the shuffling of sneakers against the gravel ground on the opposite street, but undeniably present.

  
She hung her mouth agape, too tired to continue the choppy sound of phlegm and blood fighting against the blast of air from her trachea.   
  
A liquid poured out of her eyes. She was tearing, but not crying. Her puffy, drooping eyes, finally pierced and now leaking streams of warm pus.   
She dabbed her eyes with her index fingers, and looked at her hands, viciously rubbing them against her shirt.   
  
  


 

 

 

“Go away.” She whispered, quietly. The woman settled back into her skin, she pulled against her pale skin, wrinkled and speckled with moles and brown spots.

“Do you… need help?”

 

“I SAID GO AWAY.” She screeched, her voice no longer grainy and broken. Back to the gruff roughness that was a welcome change for her, deep and angry. She tossed a handful of dust and hair and shredded leaves in Kristine's direction - but it only fell like confetti, the wind gently carrying it back towards her. 

 

Kristine, unsure of how to deal with the situation merely nodded, turning on her heels and quickly walking off, hurrying her pace.  

 

Before she managed to disappear into a dingy alleyway, she swear she could hear a gravelly voice, as grating as rusty metal against glass.

 

**_We will meet again._ **

 


End file.
